Local author Anne Eldridge releases 2nd novel

[August 19, 2011]  For some of us, writing is a hobby. It is a way to get away from the busy, electronic world we live in and just enjoy the artistry of conveying words into written thoughts and ideas. For some of us, however, writing is a necessity, a passion that requires we sit down and empty our mind onto paper, saying what we feel compelled to tell the world.

Anne Eldridge is one of those writers, and now she has yielded to that passion and has begun the journey as a full-time author. Anne has just released her second novel and third book, called "Precognition."

Previously an advertising executive, Anne said she decided last fall that she needed to direct her full attention to being an author. She said she feels she has a gift and a love for telling stories, and now she has made the huge step to serving those two mindsets full time.

Her latest book is on sale now.

Anne talked about the novel, and although it is her latest, it actually was the first book she wrote some eight years ago. Anne said she wasn't happy with it and kept reworking it to try to make it as good as possible.

Then an incident that caused her to step back from "Precognition" actually helped her work the novel into exactly what she hoped for.

Anne had taken an assignment to write a 50,000-word e-book for a publisher but then became uncomfortable when she saw the explicitness of some of the books the publisher was posting. So she reworked the story into a print novel and released it last year. The book is called "Alice and Henry."

According to the book description on Amazon.com:

Alice & Henry is a magical tour through the landscape of a small Midwestern town where the past and present collide and the Afterlife is the one place where all can be understood.

It was her work with "Alice & Henry" that gave her the experience and higher skill level that allowed her to go back to "Precognition" and rewrite it again to "finally get the story where I wanted it."

Anne is a student of writing and said she strives to continue to hone her craft. But in some ways she is a bit unconventional. She uses no outline, and rather than have a set time of the day to write, she allows the characters in her stories to dictate her storytelling.

"The characters tell me what is going on sometimes," she says. Anne talks about her characters as if they were alive. Often in the interview she spoke of how a character took her down a path she didn't expect and changed everything that was happening in the story.

Anne said sometimes she will go on a writing "bender" for 16 or 18 hours as a flood of words demand their way into print. Then she walks away, allowing "the well to fill up again."

Anne said she has plans for several more books and already has completed six chapters of her next novel, which she wants to keep a secret for now.

She was asked, since her two novels are fantasy, if that was where her continued works would also be, but she said she isn't certain what the future holds. She said that since she isn't using a "conventional" publisher, she isn't pigeonholed into doing only one genre like some authors are.

She is learning marketing, and this time, by using CreateSpace as her publisher, she has total control over her book, which she enjoys.

Anne is enthused about her decision to work full time as an author and said she is developing a following of readers that she is most grateful for. She hopes to continue to grow readership with the books she has already penned and the others she intends to write.

As part of the marketing of her new novel, Anne will be at Beaches Boutique and Tanning Salon at 531 Woodlawn on Saturday to sign copies of her book.

You can also visit Anne on the Web at www.anneeldridge.com. She also has a public fan page at www.facebook.com.

The following is the synopsis of Anne's book "Precognition," as taken from Amazon.com:

(Copy)

FORGET EVERYTHING YOU THINK YOU KNOW ABOUT FANTASY AND ADVENTURE "The precognition had begun a month before my thirteenth birthday and the aging process ceased in my late twenties...the old familiar sense of dread settled in my chest..." Ninety-two years stretch behind Sebastian Bach—a long life spent seeking freedom from his inability to age, premonitions of death that compel him to intervene in the lives of strangers, and his abject failure to save anyone. As the years have passed, so have his family and friends, leaving him utterly alone, but for a mysterious sword passed down through his family and given to him on his thirteenth birthday. His world suddenly changes when he foresees the crashing of a transatlantic flight—by far the greatest loss of life he's ever tried to avert. In desperation, Sebastian boards the plane...and sets off a chain of events that will catapult him into the past to experience previous lifetimes: one as Hector, mighty heir to the throne of the fallen Troy...and the other as Roland, hero of the court of Charlemagne. With the help of Erin Montgomery, a beautiful young woman who shares a link to his mysterious past—and the ancient enchantment of the sword known as Durandel—Sebastian learns how a deadly ambush in the Pyrennes in 778 A.D. altered his soul's destiny...but can the past be changed to save his future? The latest masterwork by Anne Eldridge, author of Alice & Henry: A Novel, Precognition is a sweeping, epic paranormal journey into a realm beyond the boundaries of time and mortality—where one man's destiny reaches across three spectacular lifetimes...and the past comes alive. Precognition is Fantasy-Adventure—redefined.

[Text from files; Mike Fak]